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Local heritage book of Ratzersdorf('Recse' in Hungarian, 'Racistorf' in Slovakian) The parish of Ratzersdorf, founded in 1328 and today the neighborhood of Raca in Bratislava (the capital of Slovakia), lies in one of the many formerly German-speaking areas of what was then Austria-Hungary, county of Pressburg. With the document "Permission to separate from the evangelical parish of Pressburg', signed on 1 May 1834 by church supervisor Jónás Kettner, the parish of Ratzersdorf began the keeping of its own parish registers. It is thanks to the last pastor of Ratzersdorf, Eduard Drgala, that these churchbooks of the evangelical (Lutheran) parish AB (=Confession of Augsburg), covering 1834 to 1945, made it to Germany during the expulsions (of Germans from Czechoslovakia and elsewhere immediately after WWII). For the many years the books were in his custody, he willingly gave information to all engaged in family history research as well as to those needing to prove their heritage to government agencies. When he no longer felt able to do this, on account of his age, he gave the books to another former resident of Ratzersdorf, who then had the responsibility for them until this person, in turn, passed them on to the Archive of the State Church of Württemberg, in Stuttgart, following an agreement between the Evangelical Church and the Union of Carpathian Germans.
The Carpathian Post, in its September 2001 issue, reports on how
the churchbooks were saved from destruction, as follows: Before the records were turned over to the Archive, a complete indexing was undertaken. On the basis of further investigations of my own (in the churchbooks of Pressburg and places further north such as Grünau, Bösing, Limbach and St. Georgen, which likewise had strong evangelical parishes) it was possible to follow some ancestral lines clear back to the beginning of the 18th century. In addition, families which had moved away from Ratzersdorf were then found in neighboring parishes, and the data was supplemented accordingly. In this connection I had the help of Vladimir Bohinc from Neustadt on the Waag, whom I've come to value as a well-versed professional genealogist. I certainly can recommend him highly and his homepage is www.konekta.sk. Correspondence can be in German or English or, of course, in Slovakian. I wish everyone much success researching in the online heritage book for Ratzersdorf parish, and hope for a good number of additions to this information. Norbert Gschweng, May 2006
Notes on the indexing of these records:
Translated by Christopher Wolter |
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